Posted on 09/01/2009 7:43:33 AM PDT by bestintxas
Hard work by U.S. government officials has made the country safer now than before the Sept. 11 attacks, but luck has also played a big part in preventing another terrorist attack, former Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge said Monday.
"It's primarily due to a lot of hard work by literally hundreds of thousands of people," Mr. Ridge told The Washington Times' "America's Morning News" radio show on the release day of his new book, "The Test of Our Times."
"But at the end of the day," he added, "Maybe we're just lucky."
Mr. Ridge, a former Republican governor of Pennsylvania, also said the department he headed - created in the immediate aftermath of the deadly attacks - has improved since its rocky start in 2002, but the department still faces overlapping oversight by lawmakers on Capitol Hill that hampers its mission.
"With 86 committees and subcommittees ... until they get their act together and streamline their oversight, it'll always be very challenging for this department to operate as efficiently as it needs to," he said.
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtontimes.com ...
I prefer to think of it this way. http://www.equitygroup.com/shared/fs/0046/004601867/March%202009.pdf
Working for something is not luck...it's a result of that work....
While a leader may have these thoughts, a leader would not blurt them out in an interview because it belittles the hard work and morale of people who go to work everyday thinking they are making a difference.
Memo to Ridge: You are already in a hole, stop digging.
“No Attacks? Maybe We Were Just Lucky”
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Tom Ridge in elected office? Maybe we were just abysmally unlucky.
There is just no recognition that choices matter, that individual effort is important. No, no. It's in the stars -- ask your astrologer if today is a lucky day for you. Buy a lottery ticket -- maybe you can be a winner in life!
I don’t take his comments the same way. What if he said the opposite? “We weren’t attacked because I was the biggest, baddest Homeland Security Secretary in the history of the world!” It would come off as hubris, and even worse if an attack came later which was hatched on his watch.
The bad guys only have to get lucky once.
The good guys have to be right all the time.
Why did Bush appoint this clunking mindless Neanderthal?
We have a lot of Red Blooded Americans working behind the scenes to protect us and a lot of fools up front.
I’m afraid that it was obvious at the time that Tom Ridge was a lousy pick for the job. He was the guy, just to take one item, who said that it was wrong to “profile” people at airports. Meaning that you have to search the grannies in wheelchairs but let anyone in a Muslim outfit go straight through, or you’ll be in trouble with your bosses if CAIR complains.
There was, indeed, a great amount of luck involved. Plus the efforts of a lot of people in police departments and out in the field who didn’t let themselves be crippled by the bureaucracy.
Which is not to say that things won’t now get much worse. At least Bush was seen to be eager to defend our country against terrorists. That’s certainly not true of Obama. How eager will the ordinary people out in the field be to find terrorists now, when they know that Obama’s response will be to give them stimulous money and set them up in some vacation spot?
This man should hang his head in shame.
“We have a lot of Red Blooded Americans working behind the scenes to protect us and a lot of fools up front.”
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Indeed.
The shiny teeth hairdos represent, with rare exceptions, the worst that America has to offer.
Now I remember who Biden reminds me of.....Ridge.
Aye, well said. Tom Ridge was obviously an incompetent HSS, much like Napolitano is now.
I wonder how much Tommy is getting from the Dem party for this little fiasco.
He could have said, “We weren’t attacked because of the vigilance and skill of a wonderful team of people.”
He did say that.
Ridge was a lackluster, benign, incompetent leader of DHS, just as Norman Minetta was. Well, actually, upon reflection, Minetta was worse!
Ridge doesn’t really have any room in which to point fingers - he ignored stuff that was going on and focused his efforts on serching grannies in wheelchairs and 3 year-old girls trying to board airplanes than actually do anything to stop or curb potential terrorist attacks.
However, we did get one thing from Tom, a pretty but meaningless “threat level” color code!
Why would anybody waste their money in purchasing this book?
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